Whiteout

by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk

Genres: YA Historical Fiction; YA Romance

Synopsis

Atlanta is blanketed with snow just before Christmas, but the warmth of young love just might melt the ice in this novel of Black joy, and cozy, sparkling romance—by the same unbeatable team of authors who wrote the New York Times bestseller Blackout!

As the city grinds to a halt, twelve teens band together to help a friend pull off the most epic apology of her life. But will they be able to make it happen, in spite of the storm? 

No one is prepared for this whiteout. But then, we can’t always prepare for the magical moments that change everything.

From the bestselling, award-winning, all-star authors who brought us Blackout—Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon—comes another novel of Black teen love, each relationship within as unique and sparkling as Southern snowflakes.  

Release date: November 8, 2022

Publisher: HarperCollins

Print pages: 288

Sample

OneStevie

Morningside—Lenox Park, 3:01 p.m.

THERE ARE INFINITE ways that terrible night could’ve turned out differently.

Some quantum theorists believe there’s another you out there. Another me. That our universe is really, really big—infinitely large—and because of that, there are only so many ways matter can arrange and rearrange itself. Eventually, everything has to repeat, they say.

So there’s another version of this reality. A parallel one. Another me. Another you. Another version of the people we might love. Another outcome to every mistake we’ve made . . . living in another version of this universe as if we’re only a deck of cards shuffled and reshuffled, beholden to the numbers.

I should know. I understand the science. I have the highest GPA possible in my grade, shattering all the records at Marsha P. Johnson Magnet (or MPJM, as we call it). I could’ve tested out of high school in the ninth grade, but chose to stay for . . .

Whatever. Anyway, back to the point. There are infinite ways that terrible night could’ve turned out differently.

Imagine if I hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in my experiment that Sunday afternoon, and hadn’t left the lab late covered in calcium sulfate and stinking of acetic acid, my super-long locs needing a refresh and my hands tinged green from overflowing graduated cylinders.

Imagine if I actually had taken the time to look like a perfectly put-together girlfriend, someone worthy of being loved instead of an overly anxious mess. And if that anxiety didn’t push me to make the most catastrophic decision ever as I tried to get myself to relax. I can’t even face what I did.

Or even the night before it all happened: Imagine if I hadn’t wasted our Saturday presenting my girlfriend, ex-girlfriend, my hopefully still girlfriend, Sola, with my charts, animated brain models, chemical equations, and study data for my AP Chemistry midterm project on love. The hypothesis posited that love was simply a biological response built into human brains to ensure the survival of the po

pulation . . . so is it even important?

Imagine if I hadn’t pontificated on my hypothesis, drilling down on how my results proved that love holds an overblown significance in our society and is most often wielded to make people believe that having a partner is some sort of accomplishment.

Being the smartest person in the world . . . now that’s a feat.

Curing cancer . . . ending pandemics . . . those are achievements.

Building libraries in communities that lack them . . . something to shout about.

Being in a relationship, though? There’s no need for a trophy or gold sticker . . . right?

Imagine if my whole experiment hadn’t invalidated our relationship.

Back to the awful Sunday night in question: Imagine if I hadn’t been so on edge, worried about being impressive, trying to show off that I was, in fact, the smartest person in school and would be able to go to the college of my choice; that I could identify every Nigerian dish her mother had made with the correct pronunciation, even as an outsider; that I could be so perfect, Sola’s parents and aunties and uncles and cousins would like me accept me. Accept us.

Accept our love.

If I hadn’t talked so much.

If I hadn’t been such a pompous ass.

If I hadn’t driven home that way.

Maybe in a parallel universe, like the one the quantum theorists theorize, that other version of me is less awkward, less nervous, less needi

ng to know everything to feel tethered to reality, and maybe that me didn’t ruin her relationship three days ago. Maybe the cards were shuffled differently there. Maybe there’s an outcome where I didn’t blow up my life.

A knock rattles my bedroom door. “What—I mean, yes?”

The door creaks open. Pop crowds the doorway, forehead molasses brown and crinkled like the gingersnap cookies Aunt Lisa brought over yesterday for the holidays.

“I’m going to pick your mom up at the aquarium so we can go Christmas shopping at Lenox Mall.” Pop’s gaze scans my bedroom, the purse of his lips telegraphing his unhappiness with its current state. His once perfectly neat, perfectly behaved child would never have a messy room. Future scientists are never messy.

“First, you can drop the ‘mall,’ Pop,” I correct, fixing my eyes on the observation log in my lap. “While it’s technically correct, colloquially, it’s just Lenox. Second, you shouldn’t say Christmas shopping because there are other winter holidays happening right now, and more to come later in the month. It’s not inclusive.”

Pop sighs. “Stop giving me a hard time, baby girl.”

I cringe and look up. Pop knows how much that second word grates. How limiting it feels right now. How I’m trying to figure things out. I’ve told him. “Don’t call me that.”

He puts his hands in the air. “Sorry. Forgot all your new rules.”

“They’re not new, Pop.”

“Well, I’m still making sense of it all too

,” he says.

“So am I,” I mutter, feeling like everything I thought I knew about myself, Sola, my experiments, the world, is changing.

Pop sucks his teeth. “Look, I’m just here to remind you that you’re still grounded.”

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“That means no visitors.”

I refocus on my log. “She doesn’t want to see me, so no need to worry there,” I say. “Pretty sure I ruined everything, and since you all won’t let me have my phone back, I can’t even do anything about it.”

He sighs and starts his lecture on consequences for one’s actions, blah blah, full-on rolling into Reverend Josiah Williams mode. “And no leaving this house.” He clears his throat like he always does before he has to be a hard-ass. “You better answer the house phone when I call to check in.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” Pop strides deeper into the room. “’Cause lately it seems like all the things I thought you knew, things I taught you, went straight out the window . . . and you’re acting like you lost all the sense you got. Where is my brilliant girl?”

I curl deeper into my window nook and gaze out at our front yard. The sky is a powdery white as precipitation drifts down. “No two snow crystals are alike. Did you know that?” But there’s no avoiding his monologue about my current moral failings and his surprise that his poster child, his only child, could mess up. He quotes so

me scripture that goes in one ear and out the other, and I wish I could remind him that we’re not in his megachurch and he’s not at the pulpit. That the last thing I need to hear about is “respecting my parents” and “following my elders’ leads.” It’s too bad he can’t tell me what to do when you’ve made the worst mistake of your life and hurt someone you love.

I cut in again: “Some are flat plates with dendritic arms shaped like small columns. Pencil flakes or needles, you could call them.”

“You really talking to me about snowflakes, Stevie? Did you hear anything I said to you?”

“Snow crystals. The word snowflake is more a general term. Could mean one single snow crystal or a few of them all stuck together.”

“Stephanie Camilla Williams!” Pop’s voice deepens in that warning way, the kind when Black dads say your name, you know you’re toeing the line.

“It’s Stevie,” I mumble, crossing right over it.

“Stevie.” (Pop hates calling me that but has acquiesced because he knows I’ll just keep correcting him.)

“What? It just started snowing, and I thought you should know, so you’d be careful. All that condensed water vapor coming out of those clouds”—I point out the window—“could make the streets messy. Statistically, there will be an average of six point seven motor vehicle crashes in these weather conditions.”

“Aren’t you glad you aren’t going?” Pop winks, then darts over to kiss my forehead before I can protest. I’m going to need a surge of endorp

hins to get through what I have to do tonight. “Be our perfect gir—I mean, child, please,” he says as he exits my room.

I want to grumble that I’m not a child anymore. That I’m almost seventeen, but it wouldn’t matter to him. I will be a child even at forty, because he’s the “elder.”

I gaze out the window again, watching as Pop’s car backs out of the garage, then disappears up our street and out of view.

I sigh and thumb through my observation log, combing through all the experiments I’ve done. The failed ones, the adventurous ones, the complicated ones, the prize-winning ones.

I can’t stop flipping to the one that blew up my relationship. It stares back at me. My once pride and joy, earning me an A+ for the semester. The one that sparked an argument that bled into what was supposed to be one of the biggest nights in my relationship history with Sola—one where I finally got to meet her parents, not just as her best friend . . . but as her girlfriend.

Date: 9/8

EXPERIMENT TITLE: LOVESICK, THE OXYTOCIN OBSESSION

SCIENTIFIC QUESTION: What is the biochemistry of modern teenage love?

I gaze at my data tables of saliva samples and oxytocin measurements. Data that supported my theory: teenagers who claim to be “in love” will have oxytocin levels that mirror those of a person addicted to recrea

tional drugs. Maybe if I hadn’t chosen this experiment or told Sola about it at all, we wouldn’t be in this mess. I wouldn’t be in this mess. But I told her everything. Because I always tell her everything.

I slam the log shut and walk to my desk. I pluck the tiny LEGO bouquet I always keep there, squeezing it over and over again, hoping it’ll slow down my heartbeat. I click a button, and the automatic blinds I had installed across the left wall of my room lift. Instead of revealing a stretch of windows, there’s a map of my life laid out across my mom’s wallpaper like a complex multitiered mathematical equation.

I wish life was as easy as a chemistry experiment. Choose the right reactants and blend them the right way to yield the product you desire. Chemistry makes things simple. If you know how the elements behave, you can predict the results. Voilà: no one gets hurt or burned . . . frustrated or disappointed.

The life wall journey begins with my baby pictures, then includes every newspaper clipping about my genius-level IQ and science experiments, with headlines shouting about the youngest-ever kid to break the world record for mental math equations completed in under a minute. There are articles about my desire to be a biochemist, and there’s my series of medals, and there are cheesy portraits of me with famous scientists and politicians, all fawning over me being a tiny smart person. All before sixth grade . . . all before meeting Sola.

Everything changed when I met her. Which is evident in how much space she takes up on this wall. Her kid photo is here too, right next

to one of me holding a trophy from my middle school science fair. Her little-girl face stares back at me. Round and chubby cheeked, hair beads hitting her shoulders.

I can almost hear the click clack they used to make every time she turned her head to be nosy.

On Sola’s first day of sixth grade, the front office lady, Ms. Townsend, marched her into Mr. Ringler’s classroom. That click clack of her braids echoed in between all the introductions. Her dark brown skin glistened so much, my mama would’ve said she looked like candied pecans fresh from the oven. And Sola was grinning so hard, my cheeks throbbed in sympathy.

I remember being jealous. Her ability to step inside a room full of people she didn’t know and just smile. And not just a regular, sheepish smile . . . no, the deeply happy kind, as if somehow she was excited to be the new kid or felt like she’d just started a brand-new adventure or something. She wasn’t afraid that someone would call her cheesy.

I spent a lot of time making sure people didn’t know how I felt. I could be angry or sad or frustrated or even happy, and no one would ever know. I could control every one of my facial muscles. But Sola let it all shine through.

She’d plopped down next to me, filling the empty chair at our two-seater desk. I’d tried to ignore her, burying myself in Mr. Ringler’s math worksheets or playing with the LEGOs hidden in my side of the desk. If I didn’t make eye contact, maybe she’d stop glancing over at me.

“Hey,” she’d whispered. “Excuse me . . .”

I’d pretended to not hear anything, but then a little paper tent appeared in my line of sight. I couldn’t resist opening it. Inside sat a gummy worm and a story about its dastardly life as a worm burglar. I giggled and looked up to find her intense (and beautiful) brown eyes aimed right at me.

She unleashed that sunshiny smile. “We’re going to be best friends. I know it,” she said, her voice confident and tone prophetic.

“How do you know?” I couldn’t look away from her.

She pushed another worm in my direction. “Because you laughed at my story. Which means you get me. And I knew you’d like it, which means I get you.”

I tried to hide a smile, then pretended to pay attention to Mr. Ringler’s fractions (even though I already knew how to do them). While she ignored the math lesson, scribbling away in her journal—writing more stories about the worm burglar, I presumed—I made a tiny bouquet of LEGO flowers and left it in her side of the desk when she went to use the bathroom. I waited the whole rest of the day for her to find it, and when she did, she beamed like I’d left her a million dollars. At that moment, I knew: I wanted to make her smile like that forever.

Now, I set my own LEGO flower bouquet back on the desk in my room. Over the years, I’ve made dozens of these, leaving them in her locker or on the dashboard of her car or tucked away in her purse. A tiny way to remind her that I love her and I’m always thinking of her, even when I go quiet and get lost in my work and can’t get the words out.

I run my fingers over the wall and sigh, tracing how Sola intersects with almost every milestone in my journey. She probably should’ve been there from birth. There are pictures of her—of us—everywhere: hanging out after school while our classmate Kaz and I tutored people struggling in science; avoiding my dad’s sermons and hiding with Porsha in the wings of his church; going to hear Jimi sing at gigs all over the city; sending old-fashioned care packages to Evan-Rose at her fancy boarding school (a school where Sola and I went to sleepaway camp, and that we almost wound up attending); the two of us hanging out at the aquarium with Ava, staring up at the largest saltwater fish tank in the United States, while my mom handled boring fish logistics stuff in her office.

I move down the life wall to my most prized section: everything laid out under the words THE FUTURE.

All of my our plans sit there like a dream poised to evaporate into thin air.

Howard University after high school.

A shared apartment in DC.

A gap year post-graduation, to travel the world together.

A job in a lab or with a big pharmaceutical corporation so I can earn enough for her to stay home, write, and become a best-selling romance author.

Marriage.

Three kids.

Lifelong love.

Forever happiness.

An anxious bubble balloons in my chest. I grab my observation log and hug it close, hoping it can make the bubble burst. “You have to fix this, Stevie,” I say to myself.

I flip it open again and pore over the elements of my newest experiment. The most important theory I’ll ever test.

EXPERIMENT TITLE: MY GRAND PLAN TO FIX THE ULTIMATE SCREWUP.

SCIENTIFIC QUESTION: Can you get someone to forgive you and love you again?

HYPOTHESIS: If Stevie combines the proper romantic elements to create the perfect romantic gesture, then Sola’s heart can be recaptured.

I recite the step-by-step plan, all the people I’ve already texted, all the favors I’ve requested, all the parts of this experiment that have to work for me to achieve my desired outcome. The biggest and riskiest pseudo chemical equation of my life. The only way to fix all the things this version of me has done in this version of the universe.

I dart to Mom’s home office at the front of the house and retrieve my phone from the safe that she doesn’t think I know the code to. But Mom chooses numerical passcodes the way most people do: she uses an already-meaningful set of numbers for easy memory retrieval. For five-digit codes, the house number where she grew up—52404—is her go-to. Her ATM pin is the last four digits of her phone number: 9860. The eight digits for her cell phone? Her and Pop’s wedding anniversary: 10221995. And this safe? It’s my birthday: 1230.

I punch in the numbers and hear the triumphant ping of the bolt releasing.

Of course the phone is dead. I plug it in and sink into Mom’s worn-out desk chair, my legs finding the leather grooves she’s left behind from sitting for so many hours poring over aquarium reports.

My heart thuds as I wait to see what might be waiting for me on my phone. There are papers scattered all over Mom’s desk—board meeting minutes and research on moon jellyfish. Maybe marine biologists are messier than biochemists . . . but I guess I don’t have room to judge right now. It’s not like my room is exactly clean.

The phone glows, and as it comes back to life, the lock screen fills with social media notifications, alerts, and email previews. And messages from Sola. One after another. Single lines of anger. Thick text blocks of sadness and frustration. All built up over the last few days.

SOLA

I can’t believe you did that.

I lie awake at night replaying it over and over again. From your ridiculous “experiment” that basically invalidated how we feel about each other to you ruining the dinner with my family. Our BIG dinner. Our big moment. All in one weekend.

And you won’t even text me back! It’s been THREE DAYS, and NOTHING!

Do you even believe in love? Do you love ME?

How could you?

OUR RELATIONSHIP IS NOT AN EXPERIMENT!

The final long text is from this morning:

You know what? Since you love deadlines and dates and precise expectations and only seem to respond to those, I’ll give you one. If I don’t hear from you by midnight tonight, it’s over. You owe me an explanation, Stevie. What the heck was going on with you? Why did you behave that way in front of my family? And don’t give me any science bullshit. I want to know that you aren’t a robot. That you feel something. Anything. If you can’t show me, please don’t ever call me again. In fact, you can just forget you ever knew me. I’m sure there’s a biochemical way to do that. . . .

My vision blurs and the words jumble on the screen, scattering in all directions as my heart sinks. Right down into the pit now, burning a hole in my stomach. What Sola said the last time we saw each other echoes in my head as if she’s right in front of me, shouting.

“Do you even believe in love?”

“If it’s all just science, how could you possibly love me?”

“Is our relationship a complete lie?”

I call her.

It goes straight to voicemail.

I try again.

And again.

Nothing.

I get up. Pace. She thinks I’ve ignored her for three days. She had no clue that I’m grounded and my parents took all my devices

and have been watching my every move. Once she hears the explanation for my silence, everything will make sense. It’ll cool her anger. Rational heads will prevail . . . isn’t that the phrase? She should know that I would never ignore her.

I message her on every app I can think of. Then I click open my email app—which won’t sync. (Typical.) So I retrieve my laptop from Mom’s safe and power it up. All the folders load neatly on-screen, freckling a photo of Sola, her beautiful hair swaddled in a gorgeous gele made by her mother. The deep peacock blues and rich oranges of the fabric make the deep brown of her skin glow.

I send her an email. Then wait, and recheck social media.

My computer chimes.

Delivery status notification (failure)

Did she delete her email account? Or is this some sort of evil blocking software? Am I blocked? Would she do that? Can she do that?

I call Sola.

Nothing. Still straight to voicemail. Why is her phone off? She couldn’t be in trouble because of me, could she? I remember her saying, “Yeah, my parents don’t believe in the whole grounding thing.”

I hold my breath and dial her house phone. It rings and I almost don’t say a word when her mother answers.

“Hello?” the thickness of Mrs. Olayinka’s Nigerian accent pours through the phone. “Hello?”

I clear my throat. Sweat skates down my back. I tug at my sweater. A long silence crackles between us.

“Who playing on my phone?” she barks.

“Hi, Mrs. Ola . . . Mrs. Olayinka.” I gulp.

“Who is this?”

I hang up and put my hands over my eyes. “Pull it together, Stevie,” I say to myself. “All this cortisol is going to lead to the shrinking of your prefrontal cortex. Something you need to become the best biochemist in the world. You have to calm down.”

I drop my head between my knees and take three deep breaths. I can fix this. My plan from three days ago won’t work, since there’s no way all the favors I called in can be pulled together by Sola’s midnight deadline. (Midnight! Is she trying to destroy me?) I have to come up with something new—and fast.

I check all the apps again. No response from Sola.

I rush back upstairs to my room and stare at my life wall. At our history, all laid out. I see a photo of the fireworks we saw together on the Fourth of July last year, and another one of us at the stadium where we suffered through a football game for my dad’s sake (so brutal, that sport). The only thing that made it bearable was Who’s on That Plane?—the game we played where we counted the planes we could see flying overhead through the gaping circle of Mercedes-Benz Stadium’s open roof, guessing who might be inside.

And then it hits me like lightning, what I could do. What I have to do.

I scroll through my phone until I find Ernest, the older brother of my other best friend, Evan-Rose. Because he’s the only one who can help me now.

STEVIE

Mayday, mayday! SOS, Ern!

ERN

You’re so silly, Little Stevie. What’s up?

Hey now, I’m not that little anymore. And I need your assistance with a very high-stakes situation.

High stakes, huh? You young ones are so dramatic. Name it, and you got it.

It’s, umm . . . kind of outrageous? Like, it’s a BIG favor. E.R. told me you’re at the stadium working on a secret engagement stunt.

Ummm . . . my sister has a big mouth, but yeah. It’s for this celebrity’s big wedding proposal but that’s all I’m saying.

So . . . can I get in on that?

What do you mean?

I’ll call you with the details, but I’m on my way.

Okay, cool. I’m still running tests, but the snow is causing problems so I don’t know how long I’ll be here. Mr. Celebrity is blowing up my phone for a report so . . .

I smile and request a Ryde. Hopefully Ern already being precisely where I need him is a good omen. After telling him my plan, I grab my observation log. Make a few changes to the procedure section, and jot down the new variable: midnight deadline.

As more logistics details fill my mind, I know this is a good idea.

I just hope I can pull it off. On time.

Or I’ll lose Sola forever. 

OPERATION SOLA SURPRISE

3:42 p.m.

Stevie

Hey y’all! So, I apparently made things worse by being grounded and not having my phone.  Sola gave me an ultimatum . . . with a midnight deadline. Which means the original plan for her big Christmas surprise would be too late and I have to do something different . . . NOW. You don’t have to get those gifts anymore.

But thanks!

Stevie has left the group.

Jimi

Wait . . . did she just . . . ? Does that notification say Stevie LEFT the group? After dropping that bomb?

E.R.

Sure does. Typical Stevie for you. Of course. Just changes the plan AFTER I already went through hell and risked expulsion to get this damn thing she asked for.

Ava

Stevie can’t do that. Can’t just CHANGE the plan at the last minute. Right?

Porsha

I mean, technically I guess Stevie CAN . . . but nah. If she’s getting ultimatums, she CLEARLY needs our help. Time for a plan of our own. Y’all in? 

Kaz changed the group name to OPERATION SOLA AND STEVIE SURPRISE. 

OPERATION SOLA AND STEVIE SURPRISE

3:46 p.m.

Jimi

Like, for real. We gotta come through for Stevie. She’s certainly done things to help US out in the past. . . .

Porsha

You right. Lord knows Stevie keeps me awake at church, analyzing the scientific accuracy (and inaccuracy) of Bible verses.

3:47 p.m.

E.R.

Stevie was my steadiest anchor to home my first semester at boarding school. Picked up every time I called to vent about *my* issues. AND she sends bomb-ass care packages.

Ava

Yeah. We’re cousins, but also kinda sisters? I know she’s got me and I always got her.

Jimi

Stevie and Sola are always at my gigs. Even the ones no one else shows up to.

And they’re the happiest couple I know. Usually, I mean.

3:56 p.m.

Kaz

Right. I’ll certainly never forget all the times Stevie helped me out with my tutoring service. Wouldn’t have survived MPJM without her.

Porsha

So we still on? Everyone understand the assignment?

Jimi

Yup.

Kaz

On it.

Ava

You know it.

E.R.

Hell yeah.